My son and I flew to Las Vegas to meet the rest of our group coming in from
New Hampshire. The following day we drove west, arriving at the Onion Valley
trailhead around lunchtime. A word of warning on Bear Canisters. You can rent
for $5.00 per trip from the Whitney Ranger station. At the trailhead it will
cost you $5.00 per day. As it turned out, we encountered no bears during the
seven days of our trip. Hopefully the tight restrictions on food storage are
working.

The first night we camped at Robinson Lake. We found it a good first camp
after leaving the trailhead at 2:00pm. The next morning under clear skies we
picked our way up University Pass. The route was snow free. Having now done it
with and without snow, we all decided snow would have been better. There was
an abundance of loose rock on the ascent. We arrived at the top of the pass
around noon and three of us went on to summit University Peak. Note: If you
keep well west of the ridge, you won't be faced with as many as four false
summits! We didn't figure this out until on the way back to the pass. The
decent from the pass is tricky. There are actually two parallel chutes, which
drop steeply into Center Basin. When descending, we chose the chute on the
left. It sports huge amounts of steep loose rock! The chute on the right is
just as steep, however it appears to have a cliff of 15 feet or so about
midway down. We arrived at a nice camp in Center Basin around 5:00pm. Everyone
had scraped legs and boots full of sand and rock! That evening, the mountains
and ridges glowed in orange and pink before the star filled sky inked out the
brilliant landscape.

Tuesday was spent lazing around, some fished and others did some bouldering or
reading. That evening the weather shifted and became locked in a nasty pattern
for the rest of the week.

Our plans had included Mt. Stanford and Mt. Bradley. We never had a break long
enough to try either. We turned back on our first try at Center Peak. A
quickly building thunderstorm dropped over the summit and we scurried off!

Thursday we had hard rain again in the morning. As soon as it broke, my son
Julian and I made for the East Ridge of Center Peak again. This time we
summited, making the round trip in about three hours! On the summit I snapped
a good picture for anyone interested in the east face route on Mt. Stanford.
We arrived in camp just in time for a real lashing of a storm. We stayed tent
bound until around 6:00pm. We could see that the weather was finally breaking.
That night the stars filled the sky in classic Sierra fashion!

Friday we enjoyed a leisurely hike from Center Basin to the Kearsarge lakes.
The views were breathtaking the entire way. A real highlight on Friday was
watching and photographing several Mule Deer grazing in the thickets near our
camp.

Saturday we finished the hike over Kearsarge pass and arrived back at our car
before noon.

The weather was fickle, we did not reach some of our goals, but the company
was great and you know what they say...a bad day in the mountains is ten times
better that a good day in the flat lands.

I have many images of Center Basin and the surrounding summits and passes. If
you would like to see them please
send me email.